Lecture Description
Anti-Americanism in France has historically been directed toward the U.S. government and corporations rather than American citizens. In the wake of World War II, the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe was considered by many to be a form of American imperialism. Along with the establishment of American military bases on French soil, the years after World War II bore witness to a great influx of American products, notably refrigerators and Coca-Cola. French concern over American cultural imports persists today, and has extended to include policies aimed at keeping the French language free of English words.
Course Index
- Introduction
- The Paris Commune and Its Legacy
- Centralized State and Republic
- A Nation - Peasants, Language, and French Identity
- Workshop and Factory
- The Waning of Religious Authority
- Mass Politics and the Political Challenge from the Left
- Dynamite Club: The Anarchists
- General Boulanger and Captain Dreyfus
- Cafes and the Culture of Drink
- Paris and the Belle Epoque
- French Imperialism (Guest Lecture by Charles Keith)
- The Origins of World War I
- Trench Warfare
- The Home Front
- The Great War, Grief, and Memory (Guest Lecture by Bruno Cabanes)
- The Popular Front
- The Dark Years: Vichy France
- Resistance
- Battles For and Against Americanization
- Vietnam and Algeria
- Charles De Gaulle
- May 1968
- Immigration
Course Description
This course covers the emergence of modern France. Topics include the social, economic, and political transformation of France; the impact of France's revolutionary heritage, of industrialization, and of the dislocation wrought by two world wars; and the political response of the Left and the Right to changing French society.